Gads, reviewing workouts I notice that once upon a time we had warm weather and thought it was spring. Now it is spring but it's January. And that sentiment better NOT keep you from the track. We've been doing a lot of L pace. We'll keep it up. But we'll turn up the psychological notch a bit. To wit: an inverted pyramid:

Alternative: do it all at L pace, shortening the 800 and 600 recoveries to 200 m (but don't take less than half the time in the preceeding interval. I suspect everyone's going to do the posted workout anyway, but if you're doing this alternative, it's ok to do 300m recoveries instead of 200m. Folks are having a tendency to jog too fast through the recovery and not be ready when they get to the start.

This is the time of year when folks have very diverse needs. Some are still starting up (especially) after all this cold weather; some have been going all winter; some are peaking for various things such as Lake Run or end of track season. At least one is doing Newport. Here's a workout you can tweak to your heart's content:

Here's the workout, with pacing and recovery scaled for the "main" group

As an alternative (marathoners take note) turn each set into a series of floats. So the first set is 600-600-600 at L pace, 600m recovery. The next is 500-500-500 (also at L, 400-600m recovery). Then 400-400-400, still at L.

This week, we'll continue to mix up L and M+ pace. I'll call this one nickes and dimes, which tips the idea. But since last week's workout was a bit tough, and a lot of your are post-Lake Run, we'll be nice and do the dimes first.

Way slow posting this. Sorry, lots of email. (And I've been trying to finish my latest bit of fiction, which is always attention absorbing at that stage..) So maybe we should do a fictional workout? Nah!

We'll keep pressing S and L paces, with a half-marathon lurking for lots of folks. Not to mention another scramble...

2 x 1 mile (chips) L pace (400). Go a touch slower than L if you're slower than 90 sec/lap on the track. This is a peak-tough workout4 x 400 (track) S to M pace. Serious marathoner types do it in floats @ L pace. Folks looking at scrambles and 10K or shorter, do 400m recoveries.

Yuck; this weather's as bad as Eugene. I can taste the smoke. So since we'll be smokin' as we're breathin' we'll not do a smokin' hot workout. Besides lots of upcoming races, so here's one for the taperers in our midst:

Cruise intervals

11 x600 on 20-25 sec recoveries at slightly (note: SLIGHTLY) faster than T pace. That means no way faster than 10K, pace! (I once did this as L pace, just to see, and it's doable, but it wound up feeling a lot like a 5K).

Vary the pace and recovery a bit so that you can find at least one friend for this. It's a really fun workout with a partner. And if you've not done it, it's not that nasty if you nail the pace.

Today's weather report is why I sometimes delay posting these things. It's supposed to be, uh, warmish. Though Duniway cools nicely as we progress, and we've had a few days to heat acclimatize, right?

Anyway, we'll do a workout that allows long recoveries, so we're less likely to progressively overheat. That means a brisk pace, though please listen to your bodies and adjust (as in, slow down!) as needed. We'll do a desceding ladder, just to allow the fraction of recovery time to increase as we go... to wit: